Did you get the message? In this era of far-flung branch locations, new methods of internal communication--such as teleconferences, videoconferences and intranets--are growing in popularity.

• Author: Sablosky, Tanja Lian

With 58 branches across Wyoming and Montana and 2,600 miles between the most distant locations, First Interstate Bank really needed an efficient, cost effective, time-saving way to manage internal communications.

"We grew really rapidly over the last five years, adding 18 branches, to go from 30 to 58, and up to 1,700 employees," says Cindy Lyle, vice president of marketing for the institution, which has its headquarters in Billings, Mont. "Although we are a $4 billion bank, it is really a family-owned bank and we see ourselves as a series of community banks. Communication is important to us, but the distances between locations made it very difficult."

At first the bank tried sending email broadcasts with information to all employees. "We had so many e-mails with so many attachments that we were constantly crashing the system," says Lyle.

Eventually, the bank moved to the use of teleconferences, videoconferences and an intranet. These technologies ended up saving the institution huge amounts of time and travel costs. "With a bank as spread out as we are, these tools have been a tremendous help," says Lyle.

Below are overviews of how four different institutions--including First Interstate Bank--are utilizing and benefiting from these up-and-coming forms of internal communications.

Face-to-Face Meetings Are Not Practical First Interstate Bank, Billings, Mont. Assets: $4 billion.

The institution has a designated number of videoconferencing facilities in each bank "area." Each market has its own bank president and leadership and quite a bit of management autonomy, says Cindy Lyle, the bank's director of marketing. When a market area conducts its monthly staff meeting, personnel travel to the designated locations that have videoconferencing capability.

When there are no PowerPoint presentations to see, the bank sometimes holds staff meetings in the form of a teleconference. As many as 100 people participate in individual teleconferences.

Another communication innovation has been the building of an intranet. Every department has its own intranet page. "One person in each department is responsible for the department's page. Those individuals are trained in Content Manager, which is the system we use for the intranet." Lyle says those page masters edit and update their page as often as necessary.

Also housed on the bank's intranet site are celebrations, awards, community service and charity updates, and links to human resources information and forms. "We don't post a newsletter," says Lyle, "but all the information that an employee could need is on the site. There is an extensive side-menu listing a wide variety of different topics of interest to employees...